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"That mean guy doesn't bother you. " She popped the top loop of the cane in her mouth. "Wi-ly. " She'd just learned the word when I'd been practicing for my spelling test and loved using it although half the time she didn't know what it meant.
Wily? Nah. I was about as wily as a Pop-Tart. This was just luck. And luck?
&n
bsp; It only lasts so long.
"Nicky, are you paying attention or are you shooting for extra home-work?"
I looked up from the history book I was only pretending to read. I was hungry. I didn't concentrate so well when I was hungry. My stomach growled as I lied, "Yes, Mrs. Gibbs, I'm paying attention. "
She didn't believe me, but the bell rang, saving me and my stomach. I bolted for the cafeteria. It was burger day. Most of the kids were all about pizza day, but not me. I liked burgers and I paid for three meals to get three of them. When Mom had handed me my lunch money for the week, she'd ruffled my hair and said I was a growing boy. I might be three inches short of Jed, but I had shot up two inches in the past month. The boys in my family might hit their growth spurts late, but when we hit them, we hit them.
I was thinking that when he slammed his tray across from mine on the cafeteria table, his shaggy silver blond hair hanging in his eyes. "I hear you're in the Russian Club, geek. "
I was, not that I cared much about it, but Dad insisted. Our grandparents had come from Russia. Roots and all that crap. Nicky was short for Nikolai, and I made damn sure no one in school knew that.
"Yeah, so?" I started on my first burger.
"That makes you a geek. A loser. " Those eyes, pale as a snow-filled sky, stared at me. They were like the eyes of a husky, a wild one used to living on its own. Catching its own food. Killing because it could. Jed was twisted inside, wrong. The teachers didn't see it. They just saw parents who didn't care, maybe some sort of learning disorder, they didn't see what he really was, because they didn't want to. But I saw.
He was a monster. He was just a kid now maybe, but you could bet he was some kind of serial killer waiting to grow up. But wouldn't that be a lot of paperwork for the guidance counselor? Why not pass him on? Let him be someone else's problem.
"I don't like geeks. " He leaned forward and bared teeth too big for his mouth. "And I definitely don't like losers. " He reached over and took one of my burgers, daring me to do something about it.
But I didn't. Not there. Dad had taught me to fight, because everyone needed to be able to take care of himself. But he'd also taught me never to do it in public where you can get in trouble and never to hit first, at least not anyone smaller. It wouldn't be fair and it wouldn't be honorable. My dad believed in honor, pounded it into me from the time I could crawl. You can protect yourself, you can fight - that's the way the world was - but only the ones bigger than you.
Honor was a pain in the ass sometimes, but Jed was bigger than I was. I wasn't forgetting that. Still, there was the whole not getting into trouble thing . . .
Taking my burger back and smacking the son of a bitch over the head with his tray would definitely get me in trouble. So I ate my second burger and ignored him. He couldn't start anything either. Not at school. And I knew ways home to avoid him. I'd gotten to know the woods that stretched behind the school pretty good. Gotten detention for skipping class to explore them more than once. I deserved a lot more punishment than that, but Principal Johnson took it easy on me, no matter what he thought about my smart-ass ways and foul mouth.
Jed kept glaring at me while ripping into my burger with those snaggled teeth. Man, was that an orthodontist's dream. That was a car payment and a lap dance, right there.
How'd I know about lap dances? I had a cousin back East who had a friend and, boy, could she tell some stories. I was thinking of one of them and wishing twenty-one wasn't so far away when Sammy made the really bad choice of sitting next to me. He couldn't have been paying attention. Nobody sat at the same table as Jed on purpose. Sammy wasn't a bad guy. Not too smart and called Dog Boy by most of the kids at school, but he was okay. He had four dogs, big, shaggy mutts, who followed him to and from school. I liked dogs. Jed hated them and the feeling was mutual. One look of his freaky pale blue eyes and the dogs would bark until foam flew from their muzzles before eventually turning and fleeing with tails between their legs.
You know you're a shit when even dogs didn't like you. I kept hoping one would hump his leg or better yet piss on it, but it never happened. Probably for the best. I didn't want to think what Jed would do if he ever caught one of those dogs.
"Hey, Dog Boy," Jed sneered. "You think I want to eat my lunch smelling you? You stink like those damn mutts of yours. Get the hell out of here. "
Sammy's eyes widened as he realized who was sitting with me and scrambled away, his tray shaking hard enough to spill his juice. He did smell a little like dog, but hey, we all have something. Jed was psycho and Sammy was a little doggy. I'd take a fur-covered pair of jeans over crazy any day. But today was a day crazy didn't seem to want to leave me alone. I'd started on my second burger, so Jed couldn't take that, but he did take my Jell-O. Cherry. It looked like fresh blood on his teeth as he wolfed it down. He narrowed his eyes at me as he licked a streak of red from his bottom lip. "You're not afraid of me, are you, asshole?"
I took another bite and chewed it. Bullies only heard what they wanted to hear. I wasn't going to waste my time.
He leaned in, his breath hot and smelling of meat and cherry. "I'll make you afraid. You got that? I'll make you so goddamn afraid you'll piss your pants. " He snatched up his tray and stalked away.
Trouble, he was big trouble. Maybe the first trouble I couldn't get around. Crazy is crazy, and crazy never learns. He'd keep coming and coming until he caught me or backed me in a corner. I didn't want to be looking over my shoulder every minute. I didn't want him watching me. I stabbed my fork in my french fries. I was going to have to do something. That something being not letting Jed beat the shit out of me and stay out of trouble.
There was a trick.
"Hey, Nicky, you hanging out with Jaws?" Isaac sat across from me, chin propped in his hand.
Jed definitely had the teeth for the nickname, but no one had ever called him that to his face. "Nah, just my turn on his list. " Isaac frowned. His parents had come over from Mexico and he'd already had his turn over that with Jed.
"Oh shit," he said, wincing. "Whatcha going to do?"
"Don't know yet. " I dropped my fork. "Guess I'll have to think about it. Sneak through the woods home until he figures that out. "
After the last class, I bolted into the woods. They were thick and deep, full of poison ivy and tangles of blackberry bushes that would tear you to pieces if you tried to push through. I managed. Scratches were scratches. They'd fade quick enough. And I'd avoided Jed.
